It comes after softball rejected an overture from the International Baseball Federation (IBAF) to enter a joint bid to win back their places in the Olympics they both lost four years ago.

 

Harvey Schiller, the president, IBAF, said today that the addendum would be filed by the May 1 with the International Olympic Committee (IOC), who are due to decide in October which two sports should be added to the programme for the 2016 Olympics.

 

Schiller said: “There has been a great amount of talk about adding women’s baseball over the past year, but recently the growth of the sport in places where baseball is already popular, as well as the request by new federations to increase the number of young girls playing in baseball, has led us to move ahead and amend our 2016 proposal.

 

"We have shown that baseball is a sport for all, and the addition of a women’s discipline for the Olympics - which will take the place of our women’s World Cup in 2016 - only further illustrates that point.”

 

Currently over 30 of the IBAF’s 128 member Federations have a full discipline for women, although almost all have combined programmes for boys and girls through at least age ten, the IBAF claimed.

 

The addition of women’s discipline would likely double the number of federations offering a full women’s discipline in the next year, and will increase the number of countries eligible for the women’s World Cup in 2010, Schiller said. 

 

The women’s Baseball World Cup was held in Japan in 2008, with the host country defeating Canada in the final before a near-capacity crowd. 

 

The host of the 2010 World Cup will be announced in the coming months, with eight nations interested in hosting the event.

 

The IBAF is also in the process of finalising a committee of sports executives who will work specifically on the growth of the women’s discipline worldwide. 

 

The committee will include Sandra Monteiro, the president of Baseball Portugal, as well as Andre Lachance of Baseball Canada and others. 

 

There are seven sports bidding to be admitted to the 2016 Games.

 

Besides baseball and softball, they are golf, karate, roller sports, rugby sevens and squash.

 

The IOC's ruling Executive Board is expected to announce on August 13 which two sports should be picked.